Blood Brothers
by Zenthisoror
Summary: An enforcer's world is a small one. L's world has always been small, but Light can't help but dream of escaping or destroying the world that cages them. It's all just a game, of course, but when L is trapped under a mound of soy sauce in a replica convenience store and Light isn't answering his mission calls, he isn't so sure. (Sequel to Chessboard & Umber)


**Disclaimer: The characters are the property of the Death Note franchise. The setting is the property of the Psycho-pass creators.**

 **Author's Note: And I believe fanfiction is letting me upload stories on here again! Hello, folks. This is Zen, and I am still writing and beetling along, making things up as I go. I've had snippets of these dialogues from a Death Note/Psychopass AU sitting in my tablet for a while now so it's something of a relief to finally string these together and get, if not a story, then a character study out of it, and I think I've managed something that at least made me think long and hard about these characters and the respective ways in which Death Note and Psychopass tackle the themes of justice and law enforcement.**

 **Without further ado, I present Blood Brothers, the second part of Chessboard and Umber (which if you haven't read, I strongly recommend you do before trying this). ~ Best wishes, Zen**

* * *

The wrist device hummed against his skin.

L opened his eyes. Sliding his left hand from under his body, he fumbled for a button and pressed.

" _This is Shepherd Two. Hound Eight, please respond with situation update."_

Hound Eight? Who was Hound Eight? The Shepherds wouldn't dare keep eight Hounds in a single pack. Who knew what hounds could do once there were eight of them exercising their eight variously deviant minds? Eight dogs might have enough collective memory to remember being wolves.

" _Hound Eight? This is Shepherd Two. Where are you?"_

Pinned like a beached starfish under three collapsed convenience store shelves, snorting the dust off the floor. In the thin, frosty light of the fridges at the end of the aisle, he could just make out the lines of his hands and the bottle of gold-capped soy sauce rolling a little beyond his reach.

He was at Old Uncertain World, a theme park preserving what it called the pre-Sybil life experience. According to the visitor's guide, here he could 'safely and securely sample' the 'chaos and uncertainty' of everyday life in the pre-Sybil era without any risk to his psycho-pass, but at night time evidently provided plenty of risk to the person, when it became a particularly unsavoury 'secret gourmet club'.

In a joint investigation with Division Four, Division Two had uncovered Old Uncertain World as the monthly meeting place for Plate of Paradise, a 'dining society' for citizens that had gotten tired of the perfectly balanced nutrition and perfect flavour provided by hyper-oats, and had started sampling another relatively plentiful but more unusual foodstuff: Human meat.

The combined Divisions had made quick work catching and paralysing most of the Plate 'diners' but a number of 'suppliers', those who had arranged for trafficked foreigners, unregistered and invisible to Sybil, to be brought to the Plate, had scattered into the theme park, and it was on following three of these into a pre-Sybil replica convenience store that L came to find himself in his current predicament.

Stuck.

Caught between the shelves that had somehow been rigged to collapse upon the aisles at the press of a button. If they had needed any more evidence that the park board of directors were part of the Plate and privy to their business, the elaborate and undoubtedly expensive mechanism behind these shelves would have been it.

Somewhat worryingly, L couldn't feel his legs. Or, for that matter, much of his body, although with the warmth of pins and needles spreading through his limbs that was likely to change soon. His left temple was throbbing, probably from a blow that had been dealt to it by a tumbling bottle of soy sauce.

"This is Hound Eight."

" _Hound Eight!"_ Inspector Misora of Division Four's voice snapped and crackled over his wrist device. " _We have been trying to contact you and Hound Seven for the past half an hour. Where are you? What is your status?"_

"I am in the convenience store on the west side of the theme park."

L closed his eyes, tried to drift his thoughts away from the weight of the shelves on his back. If not for an ornamental barrel of 'special offer' sauces a little to his right he might have been completely crushed. "Subject of pursuit escaped, possibly beneath this building in a pre-planned emergency escape route. The shop floor has been destroyed, I suspect in both an attempt to disable pursuers and seal the exit from us."

" _Us?"_

Cold ran down L's back like a touch of dominator metal.

Because he hadn't entered the convenience store alone.

Light.

Where was Light?

" _Hound Eight?"_

The space he was in was small, close and dark. He could hear every breath he took against the floor, loud as the creaking metal of shelves that had collapsed on the other side of the shop floor.

Everything sounded too loud and lonely.

"Hound Seven and I."

" _Hound Seven has not been responding to our calls. Is Hound Seven still with you?"_

The hard floor pressed L's own heartbeats back to him, pulse by pulse. "A moment, please."

" _A moment? Hound Eight – "_

"Light?" he called out, through the gap between the floor and the shelves, covering the device on his wrist with his left hand. "Are you there?"

His words echoed along the collapsed aisles. Rattled amongst the debris of fake foods.

Silence slipped into place behind them.

He lifted his hand and spoke into the device. "He may be unconscious." There was a soft, slow tapping, as though Misora was drumming a finger against her wrist device. "Would an Inspector know if he were dead?"

" _No, although I've been told that the function to keep track of life signals through the device is currently under development. Hound Eight,"_ the device stuttered, " _I was given certain warnings concerning Hound Seven, about what behaviour I may expect from him. If he is not with you now, is there a chance that he – ?"_

"No." L stared into the green-blue glow of the blinking hologram. "There is a fifty seven percent chance that he is here and failing to respond simply to spite me. Despite what you may have heard, if Hound Seven chose to go rogue it would not be at such an obvious opportunity."

The finger-tapping slowed and stopped. The hologram flickered like a small green flame.

" _We've caught the rest of the Plate,"_ Misora told him shortly. _"Your division is on its way to help you. Keep us updated as to your situation."_

"I am trapped beneath a replica shelf of soy sauce variations with possible multiple fractures and breaks in my legs," he updated her quite happily, as he shifted with pins and needles and a stabbing, jagged pain shot up from both of his lower legs.

" _You enforcers…"_ Misora let out a long, exasperated sigh. " _Next time, Hound Eight, if you are injured make sure to say so first thing."_

The hologram vanished, leaving blue-green glowing smudges over his vision and a lonely, watchful silence.

"Light." L cleared his throat and coughed. The smell of old plastics and coffee and hot buns, spritzed through the shop for authenticity, had snagged at the back of his throat, but it wasn't blood, wasn't anything human, which meant that Light wasn't lying under one of the shelves in the room ground into a paste with his own fluids. "It's not like you to be so quiet."

* * *

 _"Why enforcers do not go out on patrol in the streets more often?" L looked up from his report and met Light's gaze across the aisle. "Because the presence of enforcers and inspectors in public spaces raises area stress levels by a significant percentage, even before dominators are seen. I should think that Light-kun knows this well enough without having to ask me."_

 _"No, I meant, why we cannot simply have dominators on the streets?" Light stretched back his arms, folded them behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, "Without us enforcers?"_

 _"Dominators without enforcers?"_

 _"Imagine if we could equip drones with them." Light's eyes were still fixed to the ceiling but L could see them shining. "We already have area scanners. All it would take would be to amalgamate the area scanner function with the dominator into a single mobile unit that could patrol the streets - or remain a fixed artefact in an area, cloaked perhaps, under a holo. If a latent criminal appears, it would be able to paralyse them the moment they are identified, and eliminate them in an instant if necessary."_

 _L stopped typing. "You would remove the enforcers from the judgement process?"_

 _"L, the faster that latents can be processed, the less stress and psycho-risk for everybody involved. As for we enforcers, well, with the way the Sybil system has grown, how long do you it will be before we become irrelevant and more of a hindrance to law enforcement than not? Perhaps the Sybil system could run more efficiently without human errors of judgement interfering in the process." Light's expression tightened and a small smile pulled up the corners of his mouth, but it was small enough that nobody but L could ever have hoped to spot it. "After all, who are we to judge?"_

 _"Humans, fortunately or unfortunately." L saw something in Light's face twist. "To judge fellow humans, who share the same misfortunes and fortunes, who better is there?"_

 _Light's lip curled and L knew exactly what was on Light's mind._

 _Fellow humans. The words rang hollow even to L when they both knew that there was little seen as 'fellow' between the latent criminals in rehabilitation and the citizens on the street._

 _"You're right, L." Light sat back and closed his eyes. "I concede. To judge humans with the respect, understanding, compassion and righteous anger that they deserve, perhaps the ultimate judgement should be better left to human beings. But even then, if we consider our work and the demand on law enforcement, something that could lighten the load on the inspectors in our division could only be a good thing. Drones, already positioned on the street, could help us deal with a latent criminal before we even arrive at the scene, and if we could access them and control them remotely to execute the simpler judgements, there's little difference between that and confronting a latent directly with a dominator - except that we would be reducing the confrontation and the increased stress that comes from it for all parties involved."_

 _"Hmm, judgement without confrontation. All of the glory and the thrill without any of the trouble to our consciences. Wouldn't we all like that?"_

 _L reached beneath his desk. He straightened with a crème caramel in a tub, still cool from the mini-fridge and set it on his desk. "And what would happen when people totally isolate themselves in their rooms for fear of an instant public execution by one of these judgement drones, or risking their own psycho-passes in witnessing one?"_

 _"People already do that, L. Nothing changes but the time between identification and the action taken."_

 _"And the ability to enforce from a distance if we so wished."_

 _"Exactly."_

 _L peeled back the foil from the tub, easing it back millimetre by millimetre. In the corner of his eye he watched Light pick up a pen and spin it between his fingers, once, twice, three times, faster and faster as he waited for L to respond._

 _When five minutes of silence had passed and L had yet to finish peeling off the lid from his crème caramel, Light set down his pen. "If we could redesign dominators to leave a less graphic mess at an elimination scene, I'm sure that people would be far more welcoming of their more frequent presence on the street."_

 _"You've put some thought into that as well, have you?"_

 _"It's either that or we begin combining dominators with temporary localised holo activity to cloak a targeted latent." With a few taps on his keyboard there was a redesigned drone on Light's screen, turning languidly about a point in a panel_

 _Sitting back, Light considered it with his hand to his chin._

 _L tore off the last of the foil and dropped it into the bin. "Light?"_

 _"Yes?"_

 _Why are you so desperate to show that we have no place in this world?_

 _L grimaced into his crème caramel. "It wouldn't be real true if enforcement was handed over to drones and remote procedures. If we do that, we give up all chance for choice to Sybil. We'd hand ourselves completely over to the mercy and compassion of a merciless and unfeeling god. I trust that you remember what your own father told us on our first day? That 'Inspectors and enforcers hold the dominator in their own two hands so that they may – "_

 _" – choose whether to shoot or not to shoot, and the human may make one of the few choices left in our world'," Light lifted his head and that bright gleam that was a little bit fire-colour and a little bit umber ready to burn was there. "'To let Sybil rule us, or us rule Sybil.'"_

 _L nodded. "Humans must be judged by humans."_

 _"And what about monsters?"_

 _"Some say that it takes a human to judge a monster for it to become a human again." L ran the small spoon around the edge of the crème caramel and let the dark syrup bleed up from below, welling up dark and thick under the pressure. "Justice is its only chance for salvation."_

 _"Since when did you care about justice?_

 _"Since when did you?" The background noise of the Division office – the computer hum, air conditioning whine, Aizawa and Mogi grumbling over a grainy photograph – seemed to swell and grate against his ears. "Since you started designing this system that would make null our roles and hand all that there is to Sybil?"_

 _Light snorted. "You don't care about justice."_

 _"And with these new drones of yours on the streets, would we, in fact, be handing all that there is, including Sybil, to you? Our new god, with his expanded surveillance and inescapable elimination drones, with his new, mindless, brand of justice?"_

 _Light laughed. "What point is there in a law that is escapable?"_

 _"All laws are escapable. They're created at one particular moment for one set of circumstances and wrongdoing, and humans are inventive and ever-changing in both their circumstances and wrongs that can be done. That laws are escapable enables growth and evolution. I thought that much was obvious." The expression on Light's face had that taut, careful blankness that said he was only a couple of threads away from snapping. L raised his spoon and waved it in a circle as though to collect those threads together. "Light, we both know that you are no friend of the Sybil system, however much you pretend otherwise. With you, it's always either destruction or escape. No wonder Sybil looked at you and saw a potential criminal. You'd steal the system if you could or kill it and you'd do so denying to the very end that you were ever a thief or a killer."_

 _"Sybil saw a criminal in you too, L."_

 _"Oh yes, and almost certainly a killer too. I enjoy having things given to me too much to go out of my way to take them from others, but I could see the appeal and understand the thought processes that would be behind wanting somebody removed from the world." L tapped the spoon against his mouth and smiled with amusement. "You know, I'd be much better than you at hiding my bodies."_

 _Light raised his eyebrows. "You think so?"_

 _"Yes, because you wouldn't even try. I am eighty five percent certain that you would be the kind to leave your bodies out on display, like a cat bringing back dead pigeons for its master."_

 _"Eight five is a high figure."_

 _"Well, I have drawn this number from observations of the trigger-happy way you use your dominator and flaunt your eliminations in front of your father - "_

 _L countered Light's fist with his spoon then kicked._

 _There was really very little reason for L riling up Light in this way. Perhaps there had been a few too many long dull days spent in the office of late. Perhaps it was simply that Light was so unwilling to respond and yet responsive, cooped up as the two of them were in the same small world. Perhaps all it was boredom, but even if that was all that it was, in L and Light's small world, 'all' quickly became unbearable._

* * *

At the Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre, L's days had been rigidly organised around one basic principle: A well-ordered environment made for well-ordered children.

Every child and every item, everything that could take up a portion of space, had been labelled with their name and citizen code. L had known his place in the same way that he knew his chair in the schoolroom and the span of the tiled classroom to which had been designated his desk.

Space had been allotted with labels.

Time had been allotted by a bell.

The bell had divided up the day. It had told them when to wake, when to go to class, when to eat, when to take their psycho-stabilisers, when to wash, when to start running on the track and when to stop, when to sleep, when they were free for an hour to do whatever they wished, so long as it was within the time allotted by the bell.

It would ring through the Centre corridors and blare through speakers. It came to a point that even now, out of the Centre for more than ten years, every time L came to an event that he couldn't help but imagine must occur at that particular moment, as though the time had been allotted to it, he heard a distant peel of bells from somewhere deep in his body and bones.

The last L thought he had heard them was on his first day as an enforcer, stepping into the office in a suit that fit too well and he would have preferred to fit looser. On his feet, he had worn the first pair of shoes he had ever owned that were not Rehabilitation Centre plimsolls. That lunch time, with the bells in his ears and years of Centre habit ingrained into his hands, he had taken a marker and labelled their in-soles with his citizen code.

Light had let out an affected little laugh and quickly gone on to make glib comments about trust issues that L had only been too happy to turn back on him, ripping apart that smiling mask to demonstrate just who between them had the real 'trust issues'.

So it heartened L now in the dark of the convenience store that he didn't hear a single distant toll, not a sound in the silence, because he was certain that, when the time came for him to die, they would be roaring in his ears.

He was also distantly certain that, when the time came, Light would be there, and that Light would be watching.

Which meant that now was definitely not the time because in the convenience store, it was just L, his heartbeats, his breaths dampening the floor, waiting under a mound of fake soy sauce bottles for Light, if he was there and unconscious, to wake up soon and speak.

Because Light couldn't have gone rogue. Not yet.

Not like this.

Not with L trapped under a replica shop-shelf with his legs broken beneath him, and utterly incapable of pursuing him.

* * *

 _"I think I have understood why you are so determined to have an inescapable law enforcement net."_

 _L stared at Light's back until, with no small reluctance, Light glanced over his shoulder. "You want somebody to stop you escaping the law."_

 _Light made a choked noise that was half-laugh, half-snarl from the back of his throat. "What?"_

 _"Because you know that if you truly set your mind to it and wished it, you could escape all this." L thrust the spoon across the aisle and found it gratifying how Light followed its grimy, caramel-sauce coated movements like some sort of wavering knife. "That's what this is all about, isn't it? This system with these area scanner drones that kill as soon as they spot you, this is to catch your own self, to stop you going rogue, because if your father caught you going rogue he would have to eliminate you himself."_

 _Light turned slowly in his chair, his jaw clenched, the hands on his armrests white-knuckled, and the look in his eyes made L smile. "You don't want your father to kill you."_

 _"How dare you even – "_

 _"I'll make you a promise, Light." Light all but snarled at him but L didn't care. He shook his spoon at him like a wagging finger and went on. "If you ever go rogue, I will find you before your father does and I will kill you."_

 _"That you even think there is a remote possibility that I would 'go rogue' as you put it – "_

 _"It won't be any trouble to me. As an enforcer, chasing down a rogue ex-colleague is simply part of my job enforcing public safety, and I have the crime coefficient that says I'd have the potential to carry out the task quite easily." L cupped his hand around his mouth and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I, myself, am favourable to this option. The experience of removing you and proving this theory as to your motives correct would likely do wonders for my psycho-pass, and despite what you may think I have a deep respect for your father. After all, I owe your father for getting me out of the Rehabilitation Centre, and for this work. I suppose, in short, I owe your father for this crème caramel," L replied, holding up a fresh cup of crème caramel. "So really, I only wish the best for him."_

 _For a long, shuttered moment, all Light did was stare. That red, angry gleam in his eyes faded and the expression beneath all that outward, outraged bluster turned like a tide into something strange and thoughtful._

 _What must it have been like for somebody such as Light, who had grown up beyond the walls of the Rehabilitation Centre, to have been stripped of all the entitled pride and privilege of a normal life and made to share in the cage that was L's world?_

 _What had been the final snapping point for Light's crime coefficient? L couldn't deny that he was curious. He wasn't convinced that Light had had one. It seemed to him more likely that Light had simply got tired of pretending and chosen to gracefully, wearily, hold up the snapped ends of his tether to the cameras._

 _Perhaps that was why, to L's ears, Light sounded tired when he spoke again._

 _"Then I'll make the same promise to you," he said. "If you run, L, I will find you, and I, like Sybil says, would also have no problem killing you. More to point, I am the better shot with dominator. I'll catch you in one. No arms and legs shot off first. One single elimination shot."_

 _"Then we have an agreement?" L extended his hand over the aisle. "One single elimination shot."_

 _They shook hands._

 _Light turned away, and setting his fingers back on the keyboard, L heard him let out a long breath between his teeth that sounded both frayed with terror and deeply relieved._

* * *

"So you see," said L, focusing on the white gleam of his own eyes, reflected in the resin of the rolling soy sauce bottle ahead of him, "I know that you aren't dead yet, because I haven't shot you. We made an agreement, although perhaps I should know better than to trust any sort of agreement made with you. Then again, the same could be said for any agreement you could make with me – "

He stopped. Pricked his ears.

He thought he had heard a scuff. Or a weighted creak.

Muffled, perhaps by distance but the convenience store wasn't _that_ large. At the most, it was only about three or four times the size of their office.

L held his breath and listened. Whatever it was, it hadn't come from the direction of the entrance, so it wasn't Division Two come to dig L out of the sauce shelves, but it hadn't sounded as though it come from the shop floor either…

Below. That was it. L's ear was pressed against the floor and, as he listened, he heard it again, another creak as metal shifted under weight and then the hollow, rhythmical clanging of somebody climbing stairs, up to the shop floor.

Slowly, so as not to make a sound, L pulled his right hand across the floor.

He reached for the cold leather grip of the dominator that was trapped against his side.

* * *

 _"What if we escaped together?"_

 _Light asked the question with a smile and a lilt of laughter, as though all he was asking was for L share in a little joke of his, of theirs, latent criminals that they both were, haha, but there had been something simmering in the air lately and L knew better than to be dazzled by Light's smiles._

 _"The same as if we escaped alone," L replied, "except that we would have to put up with each other until either we put ourselves out of the misery of the experience, or the PSB finds us."_

 _A creak of wood told him that Light was leaning across the lunch table, chopsticks set down in a bar across his bowl of noodles. "We'd make a better team than on separate sides of the law, L. Think about it. You and me. Your mind and mine. Just think how far we could go."_

 _"Where would we go?"_

 _"As far from here as we possibly can. Anywhere that isn't here."_

 _"Do you know what the world is like beyond the Sybil system, Light?"_

 _"No." Light's eyes shone with the same fractured madness as L sometimes saw when anybody asked about how Light had ended up in the Rehabilitation Centre, the same desperate drive, and he found himself looking at it in the same way he might look at a red, raw wound, one part in fascination and one part because he simply couldn't look away. "But neither do you."_

 _The dark spots of caramel sauce welling up around the rim of his pudding shimmered and oozed._

 _L set it down on the table. "Perhaps it may be worth considering, Light, that however much we may have been classed as unsuitable and even undesirable for living within the Sybil system, born and raised under Sybil, that we are both still the products of it."_

 _"'Born and raised'… Don't you mean 'bred'?"_

 _"Bred, kept and trained under the care and control of the Sybil system."_

 _Light smiled that paper-thin non-smile. "Like domesticated animals."_  
 _"Precisely, so how long do you really think we could survive in the world beyond Sybil where we'd be dogs in the territories of wolves?"_

 _That smile remained, mild and unassuming, like an indulgent parent playing along with a precocious child, an expression L imagined Light had had cast upon him many, many times and no doubt found infuriating. If he was hoping to infuriate L, it was, to L's bemusement, working._

 _He stabbed his crème caramel with the spoon and went on, "As easy as it is to forget, we are only latent criminals. Outside of Japan, there are real criminals, Light, of a kind we no longer fully understand – and what is going on beyond Sybil is terrible enough that people would risk everything to enter this world that you can only dream of escaping, putting them at the mercy of the likes of the Plate of Paradise 'suppliers'."_

 _"It sounds almost as if you're saying I'm spoiled."_

 _"I am saying that the ways of the world outside Sybil…" L picked over the words at the tip of his tongue, "…may not satisfy you, and if that is the case, Light, wherever you go, you will always be escaping from something."_

 _A small muscle in Light's jaw twitched. "The assumption there is that I would have no interest in improving the lot of those I live amongst."_

 _"You'll find a small, impressionable little village and preach at them from a pulpit until they behave, will you? Oh, Light, I apologise, I truly had no idea that you were such a prophet of peace at heart."_

 _Light regarded him coolly across the lunch table, right hand closed in a fist, a finger and thumb curled as though he was holding the ghost of a dominator. "How about Prometheus? Gifting them with the spark of civilisation?"_

 _L choked on the large, wobbling helping of crème caramel he had heaped into his mouth and spoke around his spoon. "Light, your hypocrisy, your egotism and loathing for the masses astound me every time they rear their hideously bloated heads from the ugliest depths of your soul."_

 _No one was quite sure where Matsuda found a broom from, but L later overheard Souichirou praising him for his quick-thinking (perhaps for the first time in Matsuda's career), to which Matsuda replied that he had been prepared (perhaps also for the first time in his career, for anything)._

 _"Alright, timeout! I'm calling timeout!" Matsuda inserted the broom between various flying fists and feet and broke them apart just as L landed a kick squarely on Light's jaw. "Honestly, we turn our backs on you two for one moment in the cafeteria and this happens. Can't you two at least give it a rest for lunch? What was it about this time?"_

 _L looked at Light, who was still seething and twitching with energy in that disjointed, frantic way L hadn't seen since their earliest days out of the Rehabilitation Centre, riddled with fracture points that L would have to be a real fool to push any further._

 _Which was why, naturally, L covered his chest with his hands, stretched his eyes wide and answered tremulously, "Light-kun was trying to corrupt my innocence."_

 _"Your innocence?" Light surged forward, teeth bared, fury blazing through the cracks, pushing past Matsuda and his ineffectual broom as the words poured from him in a spray of spit and poison. "What innocence, you criminal?! Don't take the high ground with me, L! You've been latent since you were five, since you even had a psycho-pass that could be measured! You were born corrupted! Barely human! Sybil rejected you the moment you began to think for yourself, because you were a twisted little deviant, unfit for this world and toxic for ordinary people to live with even as a child, whose own parents were only too happy to give him up to Sybil before he killed them in their sleep – "_

 _"Light."_

 _Light froze, suddenly paling, L's footprint stark red across his jaw, as Souichirou entered the cafeteria, flanked by Mogi and Aizawa. "...Dad."_

 _The cafeteria had emptied during their fight. Souichirou crossed the floor unimpeded, reaching L and Light in five long, weary strides. He stopped in front of them, glanced first at L, the lines in his face apologetic before he turned to Light. "Go to your room and stay there until I say you're fit to do otherwise."_

 _Light blinked then his lip curled. "I'm not a child."_

 _"No, but you are an enforcer who occasionally behaves in a manner that puts even a child to shame and you will not speak in such a manner to a fellow member of the Division again!" Light flinched. Souichirou went on, "This is standard enforcer discipline - restriction of movement and other privileges until the inspector assesses him ready to return to the force. Mogi, Aizawa, take Light to his room."_

 _Stunned and his shirt stained with noodle soup, Light left the cafeteria without another word, his head bowed and his fists trembling, Aizawa and Mogi following close behind._

 _When the cafeteria doors had closed behind them, Matsuda sighed and dropped into an empty chair. "And you'd both been doing so well! Your hues declouded fifteen percent last week and now look at you. Both of your coefficients double-spiked in less than ten minutes! It's like two steps forward and four hundred steps back for the both of you!"_

 _L looked away from the doors. He met Souichirou's gaze._

 _He dropped his eyes and focused on knitting his bare toes together._

 _Souichirou said, "Take a seat, L."_

 _Without raising his head, L righted one of the chairs that they had overturned in the fight and climbed onto it, settling in a crouch with his hands in the folds of his trousers._

 _"What were you and Light discussing?"_

 _L looked up and away into the corner of the room. "I'm not sure if I can provide a reliable testimony given the blow that Light may have dealt my head during our altercation."_

 _Souichirou's eyebrows rose. "Matsuda, could you please find L an icepack."_

 _Matsuda levered himself out of his seat with the broom. "I should make an emergency medical box just for these two."_

 _Once Matsuda was gone, Souichirou folded his hands together on the table._

 _"L," he took a deep breath, "all I wish to know is what was said between you and Light - two young men of outstanding intelligence, who I can often trust to be level-headed in the many of the most trying of situations - that led to today's display."_

 _L curled his toes over the edge of his seat. "Little of any consequence to anybody but Light."_

 _"I see. Then the fluctuation in both of your psycho-passes over the half an hour course of this lunch break was due to…?"_

 _"The low pressure weather," said L firmly. "Our psycho-passes have been known to be susceptible to it, and fighting is occasionally useful in order to stabilise against temporary fluctuations – Ah! It survived."_

 _By some miracle, the cup of crème caramel was still on the table, just as L had left it, little plastic spoon resting across its top. Not wasting another moment, L seized it and set a wobbling spoonful in his mouth, before he remembered that Souichirou was sitting across him at the table and gazing at him with something akin to wonder._

 _"You're staring at me, sir. Is it because I have crème caramel and you don't?"_

 _"No, no, nothing of the kind." Souichirou smiled and it occurred to L that Light would perhaps look more like his father if only his smiles had anything real behind them. "I am glad, L."_

 _L pulled the spoon from his mouth. "Glad?"_

 _"That my son, however difficult he may be, has found a friend in you."_

 _Friend. A volatile, slippery, stinging word like a corrosive gas._

 _"Yagami-san is being too generous."_

 _"Then why does it sound to me as though you are defending him, from me, for his own protection, despite the things that we all know he often says to you?"_

 _L closed his mouth, biting back words that he knew he couldn't afford Souichirou to hear. It never did to give too much hope and Souichirou hoped for his son too much._

 _"Light has always been his own worst enemy. Perhaps it was because there was never anybody nearby to challenge him." Souichirou's eyes were filled with memories. L thought,_ Ah, so that's what a father looks like. _"His mother and I, we were always worried that we would lose him to himself, but with you working alongside him…"_

 _He trailed off, adjusted his glasses then cleared his throat. "I doubt that Light has ever had the – how shall we say it? - the 'honesty of disagreement' from those he knew at school."_

 _"Yagami-san, I think you would find that the two of us are far from honest with each other."_

 _"He is still far more honest with you than he ever has been with me."_

 _"Not intentionally." L set down the empty cup and tried not to think of the wistfulness in Souichirou's tone as a plea. "I simply keep a closer eye on him and have lower expectations of how often he tells the truth than you do. It does not surprise me, Yagami-san, if you are blind to his lies and, if you are, it isn't due to any failing of yours."_

 _"It isn't?"_

 _"It isn't. It's simply that you are an honest man and as an honest man, you do not know lies like I do, or, for that matter, your son."_

 _The door flew open and Matsuda arrived at last, waving something blue and glowing, possibly an icepack, in one hand, and Souichirou nodded slowly to himself, as though something had been answered at last._

* * *

Hinges squealed. Metal screeched across the floor.

A door opened.

L pulled up the dominator and rested it alongside his face.

Heavy breathing. A pause.

Stumbling steps and then a thud as somebody stubbed their toe on debris, followed by an angry hiss of pain and a curse.

Dripping. That was the other sound. Thick, heavy drips, that dropped like coins between the aisles.

And on the back of the breath of air that came up through the open door, L smelled the hard salt of blood.

* * *

 _"L."_

 _"Yes?"_

 _"What does Light want?"_

 _Light was still confined to his room. Matsuda, Aizawa and Mogi's shift had ended. There was nobody in the office for the night but L and Souichirou._

 _L looked up from examining the new cup of crème caramel that Souichirou had placed in front of him, no doubt in part out of goodwill but also in a calculated gesture to get his attention._

 _He put a thumb to his mouth._

 _"Justification for his existence," he said, after some thought. "To exist. To be real. To be able to live true to his own nature without having even his own conscience restraining him."_

 _L couldn't resist a small, humourless smile. "Ironically, perhaps he wants to be an honest man."_

 _"If only that were the case."_

 _"Honest to himself, that is, but he is also scared of being so." L peeled back the crème caramel foil, thankful to have something he could puzzle and turn over with his hands. "He'll run from it in time."_

 _"Run?" Souichirou frowned. "L, are you saying that there is a risk that, given the opportunity, Light would go rogue?"_

 _"…I said nothing of the sort."_

* * *

Steps wove their way through the convenience store debris. L killed his breathing and lay still in the shadow of the shelves.

Grit crunched. Crunches were followed by slow, sticky scrapes, as whoever it was gently turned out their toes with each step they took.

They were walking down past the ends of the aisles - walking, stopping, then crouching down to peer beneath the shelves.

Cloth rustled and leather creaked, and something about the methodical checking reminded L of a child turning over stones for things that might move and wriggle, given the right prodding.

And then a voice called out, "L?"

* * *

 _"And what about you, L?"_

 _"Me?"_

 _Souichirou nodded. "I have a responsibility to all my enforcers to ensure that their lives are as full as possibly can be whilst they're on service. Is there anything that you want?"_

 _L frowned. "From you?"_

 _"From me. The team. Light. The PSB. Life."_

 _What L wanted? L was very simple in what he wanted. He wanted puzzles to solve and a chair to curl up in and sweet things to drown out the bitterness he sometimes tasted at the back of his mouth when his thoughts turned inwards and probed too deep._

 _L's world had always been small. In the Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre it had been the size of his room, the canteen, study and bathroom and the corridors in between, and a select circle of humans that he could have counted on a single hand._

 _There, he had learned to want no more than what was placed directly under his nose. That way, he stayed in control, and his world remained comfortably, absolutely, his own._

 _"Light mentioned family," said Souichirou and L realised that he had been silent for a rather telling length of time. "I heard that you were close to the governor of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre. I could arrange for you to meet with Mister Whammy for an afternoon."_

 _Wanting more was dangerous. Wanting what was beyond his reach and grasping for it, trying to break out of world boundaries and destroying worlds in the process, that was Light's way, not L's._

 _"That's very kind of you, Yagami-san," said L. "I think I would like that. I haven't seen him in over ten years."_

 _How time flew when you were watching your coefficient flux in a nice padded cell._

 _"I'll see that that's arranged. Is there anything else?"_

 _L put the crème caramel foil to his lips. He licked the sauce off the underside. "There is little hope in wanting anything. It serves no purpose but to make one dissatisfied."_

 _"That may be so, but it is human to want, and to want something is what changes the world, be it for better or worse." L tried not to raise his eyebrows and said nothing in response. Souichirou went on, "Sometimes when I see you, L, I think I can see that - a change that the world needs."_

 _"But no man can change the world alone," L heard himself saying and it sounded like a quote from another time and place._

 _"Yes, I should imagine it would be quite lonely if he did. He'll be a stranger in a strange land of his own making," Souichirou straightened and pushed his glasses up his nose, "and only he would know and understand the changes he made to remake the world as he did."_

* * *

L raised his head from the floor. "Light?"

"L?" Light's voice rang between the aisles. "Where are you?"

Light hadn't run. Light hadn't gone rogue. L wouldn't have to chase after him and hunt down his head to pop it, wet and red like a watermelon, with an elimination plasma dart.

But the rest of the Division hadn't arrived yet, and there was only L here to stop Light leaving if he tried and if L could see the opportunity, Light could see it too.

He kept his fingers on the dominator. "I'm here."

* * *

 _"I think..." L didn't need to look to know that he had Souichirou's attention. "I think that I would like to win."_

 _"Win what?"_

 _"Just a game."_

 _"A game?"_

 _"Between the two of us." L smiled. "There is no need to worry, Yagami-san. I have absolutely no intention of losing. Your son would be quite unbearable to lose to."_

 _"Shouldn't I perhaps be aware of, at the very least, the nature of this game?"_

 _"No, no. So long as there doesn't come a time when I stand in the way of him saving the world, I will be fine."_

 _"L, I'm not sure that I quite understand."_

 _"Save one man or the world, which one would a truly good man pick? Light is desperate to be good, the exemplary model, to show that it's the world that's wrong, not him," L chuckled and showed his teeth, "but it's a lie, of course, all lies…"_

* * *

But Light would go along with the lie. He would see it as his necessary sacrifice, as his Catherine wheel to be tied upon on his way to martyrdom. He would give up being an honest man to pretend to be good, and he would see nothing wrong with that at all, because for a man such as Light who has told nothing but lies the whole of his life, goodness was simply another lie, one that happened to benefit many, hence its enduring popularity, hence its extraordinary spread.

 _Heroes, saviours, messiahs,_ L thought absently, as the throbs of pain from his head and legs, the beats of his heart, began to blur together with the tap of Light's footsteps, _they made sacrifices of their own selves, pieces of their soul to their cause, and for Light, it would be honesty._

And what a relief it would be to Light, when honesty was what he feared the most, to be rid of that burden.

And L would know because he was the same, wasn't he?

* * *

 _"And what if you lose this game?"_

 _L raised his eyes to the ceiling and considered it, his losing, an impossibility, of course, but interesting as a thought experiment. "Then I may die and your son will become the murderer that he fears he is perfectly capable of being." Stunned silence echoed through the office. "Yagami-san has been good to me. I would not want to be the one who makes his son a criminal."_

* * *

The footsteps stopped. In the gap between the fallen shelves, L saw shoes. They were leather. There was blood on the toecaps.

Light's face appeared, half of it covered in a dark splash of blood and gore, his hair plastered to his cheeks and forehead, and all that L could really see of his features were the whites of his teeth and eyes.

Those eye whites darted around the combination of shelves and bottles that had trapped L to the floor but stopped just short of crushing him. "You were lucky."

"I am aware of that," L replied, keeping his grip on the dominator and hoping that Light couldn't see it. "Inspector Misora has been trying to get through to you. Why haven't you been receiving her calls?"

"My device wasn't working. I think something may have broken in it when one of those 'patrons' threw me against a wall in the Platehouse earlier." A fat drop of blood slid down the side of Light's face. "I thought you were right behind me."

"Yes, a shame that. If I had been one step ahead of you, it could have been you trapped beneath assorted traditional cooking seasoning instead. As it is, I am quite stuck." L looked Light in the white gleams of his eyes. "I couldn't come after you even if I wanted to."

And for a moment, L thought that this was it. He couldn't hear any bells, but there was Light crouched on the balls of his feet, dominator in hand and pumped with adrenaline, blood in his hair and a torn, pale, yellowish scrap of flesh in the collar of his shirt, and if he wanted to escape – escape L, his father, Sybil, their world – now, now was the time.

If L could see it, Light could see it too.

The moment flickered in Light's eyes, whites bright, and L slid the dominator closer, angled it ready.

Then Light sat back on his heels, dropped the dominator and raked his fingers through his hair, and the moment passed, dissolving into the dust and shadows of the shop floor.

L eased his grip on the dominator and pulled it close, its muzzle pointing innocently at the soy sauce bottle in front of him.

"It was a good thing you didn't come in the end." Light shook his head, and the scrap of skin and cartilage in his collar fluttered to the floor. It looked like chewing gum. "The suppliers are dead. Three eliminations. I got a little too close to one of them. Apparently, Sybil didn't see the merit of bringing them in for further questioning so that we could cut the supply chain for good, but I suppose killers and criminals are killers and criminals – they deserve nothing less."

Blood dripped from Light's chin to the floor.

L asked, "And what about us, Light?"

"Us?" There was a clatter from the shop entrance and the beam of a flashlight bounced across the ceiling. L recognised the voices of Matsuda and Aizawa, raised to shouts as they called across the room for L and Light. "We're justice, L. The law. The good guys."

"And the good guys always win," L muttered into the floor, his head spinning as Matsuda's excited shouts drew nearer. "Or are we the good guys because we win?"

"The latter, of course, but if it troubles you then the solution is simple –" The white line of the flashlight caught Light across his face and lit it up in stark black and white lines and a violent splatter of red. "Never lose."

Light stood up and stepped out of sight.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading!**


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